The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating whether chipmaker Broadcom engaged in anticompetitive tactics in negotiations with customers, in an antitrust investigation which could make any merger with Qualcomm a little more difficult.

For those who came in late, Broadcom wants to take over Qualcomm in a $103 billion deal. Since the FTC would likely review any merger for anticompetitive practices, the current probe could make regulatory approval more challenging.

Broadcom has recently received subpoenas that seek an extensive amount of information, according to the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report the probe on Wednesday.

The focus of the concern has been that Broadcom has changed some contracts to require customers to buy a percentage of its production of items rather than a specific number, the paper reported.

Broadcom insists that the FTC review is immaterial to our business, does not relate to wireless and has no impact on its proposal to acquire Qualcomm, Broadcom said in a statement.

But it does mean that even if Broadcom convinces Qualcomm's shareholders to ignore their board, and go for the hostile takeover, it might find the deal scuppered by regulators. Qualcomm itself has been in some antitrust hot water, so merging with another outfit which is facing similar accusations might be doubling the antitrust hurt.

Tomorrow is a big day for huge US corporate tech as Europe's top court will rule whether US chipmaker Intel offered illegal rebates to squeeze out rivals in a judgement which will have a knock on effect on other similar cases.

The ruling by the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) could provide more clarity on whether rebates are anti-competitive by nature or whether enforcers need to prove the anti-competitive effect.

The European Commission in a 2009 decision said that Intel tried to thwart rival AMD by giving rebates to PC makers Dell, Hewlett Packard, NEC and Lenovo for buying most of their computer chips from the company. It handed down a $1.3 billion fine.

A lower court upheld the EU competition authority’s decision in 2014, but last year an ECJ court adviser backed Intel’s arguments.

An adverse ruling for the Commission on Wednesday could result in a radical review of ongoing cases including cases against Google and Qualcomm.

Losing against Chipzilla will mean that long-established theories and processes would need to be reassessed and this would be a blow to the Commission and a confidence boost for Google, since, on the face of it, the theory of harm is much more established in the Intel case.

Google has come under fire from the EU over its Android smartphone operating system and online search advertising.

US chipmaker Qualcomm, meanwhile, faces EU charges of using anti-competitive methods to squeeze out British phone software maker Icera and of making illegal payments to a major customer for exclusively using its chipsets since 2011.

However it would be unusual for the ECJ to go against the Commission. If it wins, it will be business as usual and US companies could find themselves increasingly going against a hostile culture alien to them. In the US, corporations are used to rolling over the comparitively tame toothless watchdogs which are staffed, hired by, bought and paid for political appointees.

This one is over how it pays and limits mobile phone providers who use the search company's Android mobile operating system and app store.

A decision could be expected by the end of the year if the opinion of a team of experts, set up by the EU to obtain a second opinion, agrees with the decisions reached by the team that has worked on the case.

The report quoted Richard Windsor, an independent financial analyst, as saying that the Android fine was likely to hurt Google more than the search fine or the verdict in a third EU probe over AdSense.

"If Google was forced to unbundle Google Play from its other Digital Life services, handset makers and operators would be free to set whatever they like by default potentially triggering a decline in the usage of Google's services," he said.

In April the European Commission said Google had breached EU antitrust rules by requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to licensing certain Google proprietary apps.

This prevented manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android code.

It also gave financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.

The European Commission has fined Google €2.42 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules, saying the search engine outfit has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service.

The company must now end the conduct within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to fiveper cent of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google's parent company.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That's a good thing."

But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.

"What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation."

In 2004, Google entered the separate market of comparison shopping in Europe, with a product that was initially called "Froogle", re-named "Google Product Search" in 2008 and since 2013 has been called "Google Shopping". It allows consumers to compare products and prices online and find deals from online retailers of all types, including online shops of manufacturers, platforms (such as Amazon and eBay), and other re-sellers.

When Google entered comparison shopping markets with Froogle, there were already a number of established players. Contemporary evidence from Google shows that the company was aware that Froogle's market performance was relatively poor - one internal document from 2006 stated "Froogle simply doesn't work".

Comparison shopping services rely to a large extent on traffic to be competitive. More traffic leads to more clicks and generates revenue. Furthermore, more traffic also attracts more retailers that want to list their products with a comparison shopping service. Given Google's dominance in general internet search, its search engine is an important source of traffic for comparison shopping services.

Vestager said that from 2008, Google began to implement in European markets a fundamental change in strategy to push its comparison shopping service. This strategy relied on Google's dominance in general internet search, instead of competition on the merits in comparison shopping markets:

Google has systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service: when a consumer enters a query into the Google search engine in relation to which Google's comparison shopping service wants to show results, these are displayed at or near the top of the search results.

Vestager added that Google has demoted rival comparison shopping services in its search results: rival comparison shopping services appear in Google's search results on the basis of Google's generic search algorithms. Google has included a number of criteria in these algorithms, as a result of which rival comparison shopping services are demoted. Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down. Google's own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google's generic search algorithms, including such demotions.

As a result, Google's comparison shopping service is much more visible to consumers in Google's search results, whilst rival comparison shopping services are much less visible.

The evidence shows that consumers click far more often on results that are more visible, i.e. the results appearing higher up in Google's search results. Even on a desktop, the ten highest-ranking generic search results on page 1 together generally receive approximately 95 percent of all clicks on generic search results (with the top result receiving about 35 percent of all the clicks). The first result on page 2 of Google's generic search results receives only about one percent of all clicks. This cannot just be explained by the fact that the first result is more relevant, because evidence also shows that moving the first result to the third rank leads to a reduction in the number of clicks by about 50 percent. The effects on mobile devices are even more pronounced given the much smaller screen size.

This means that by giving prominent placement only to its own comparison shopping service and by demoting competitors, Google has given its own comparison shopping service a significant advantage compared to rivals.

Vestager said that Google's practices amount to an abuse of Google's dominant position in general internet search by stifling competition in comparison shopping markets.

"Market dominance is, as such, not illegal under EU antitrust rules. However, dominant companies have a special responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by restricting competition, either in the market where they are dominant or in separate markets," she said.

Three Australian banks have moaned to the country’s anti-trust watch dingo that the Apple Pay service is not fair dinkum.

The trio, who clearly never read Fudzilla, were surprised that Apple was “intransigent, closed and controlling" and accused it of attempting to freeload on their contactless payments infrastructure while slowing innovation in digital wallets.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank, Westpac Banking Corp and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank said that the engineering of Apple iPhones prevent them from delivering mobile wallets to millions. This is because Apple Pay is the only application that works with the iPhone's "near field communication" (NFC) antenna, which communicates with payment terminals.

In their latest, 137-page submission filed with the competition regulator, the banks argue that by locking them out, "Apple is seeking for itself the exclusive use of Australia's existing NFC terminal infrastructure for the making of integrated mobile payments using iOS devices. Yet, this infrastructure was built and paid for by Australian banks and merchants for the benefit of all Australians."

Needless to say that Aussie anti-trust watchdog is interested in Apple’s doings. It is expected to decide in November if the banks can collectively negotiate with Apple, which the banks reckon is the only way that Apple will be forced to stop being a dipstick.

ANZ Banking Group has joined Apple's payments ecosystem and it had to give up some of its interchange fees.

Apple told the ACCC that it would not be willing to negotiate on access to the NFC chip, minimum security standards or its insistence that banks not pass fees on to customers. The banks would just have to do as they are told.

The banks say Samsung and Google already provide access to NFC functionality without detriment to security. They also say that when Apple Pay was launched in China and Japan, Apple was willing to make compromises with banks over issues, including security.

So why aren’t the banks telling Jobs' Mob to bugger off and stop becoming the raw prawn? Apparently they are getting bothered by Apple fanboys who say it is unfair that their iPhone 7 will not work with their bank account and will not listen when they are told to buy a proper phone.

The banks say Apple's conduct will create extra costs to the Australian economy. One of the experts retained by the banks, Susan Athey from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, said that without collective bargaining, ultimately Apple will prevail "in its goals of adding an additional 'Apple Pay transaction' tax on what may eventually become a large share of all Australian transactions.

South Korea's antitrust regulator has admitted for the first time that it is looking into whether Google has violated the country's anticompetition laws.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) disclosed the investigation in a brief statement. It did not say what the probe was about nor any potential antitrust violations. The KFTC apparently raided Google's Seoul headquarters in July.

The antitrust body's statement came after a local media report said the KFTC had decided to clear Google of anticompetition charges involving the pre-loading of the company's apps on smartphones running on the Android operating system. So it probably wants to make it clear that no thumbs have been raised for the search engine yet.

While it wasn't clear whether the probe would lead to any formal charges, the investigation is another regulatory headache for Google. The firm was fined $6.8 million in Russia on Thursday and faces multiple European Union antitrust charges.

The KFTC has investigated Google before. In 2013, the regulator cleared Google of wrongdoing following a probe into whether the company hurt competition by forcing smartphone makers using Android to pre-load its search engine on the handsets.